Related

Comments

The Seattle Public Schools have already lost “customers”. It has nothing to do with closing “branches”.

Part of this is because most wealthy liberals in Seattle send their children to private schools. Only 68% of Seattle children attend public schools, as compared to about a 90% average nationwide.

Another part is due to lifestyle choices of Seattle liberals. Many of them prefer same-sex relationships. Others delay marriage and/or childbearing — often until it is too late to have children. Liberals tend to have smaller families. Liberals tend to terminate unplanned pregnancies, instead of getting married or raising the child on their own.

Seattle isn’t a very friendly place to families with children, especially those with more children. Housing is extremely expensive. Parking is very scarce. Crime is high. Traffic is terrible. Sizeable yards are almost non-existent. Many families are more moderate or conservative, and don’t like Seattle’s brand of extreme liberal politics.

It has nothing to do with the number of schools that are operating. Seattle had excess capacity before the recent proposed school closures, and it will continue to have excess capacity after the closures are effected.

Richard @ 2: “Part of this is because most wealthy liberals in Seattle send their children to private schools. Only 68% of Seattle children attend public schools, as compared to about a 90% average nationwide.”

What I find shocking is a figure I read a few years back that showed 30% or so of Seattle teachers sent their kids to private school – what kind of message of endorsement of Seattle schools is that?

I’m sorry about your daughter, Goldy, but what kind of a process should the schools use to determine which schools close, and how are you going to keep district politics out of that process?

How can they afford to? Teacher salaries in this area are not terrible, but it certainly isn’t the highest pay job in our rather high income area. Very few teachers get anything near the median family income of over $72,000 per year in King County.

If they think schools in Seattle are bad, they can always live in Bellevue or Shoreline, and commute to their teaching jobs in Seattle. Nothing requires them to live in the city.

Two possibilities: (1) Teachers are making a major financial sacrifice to send their children to private school or (2) they have a two income family, especially if the other partner has a high-income private sector position.

Hey Richard — why are you specifically claiming that it’s wealthy liberls who are sending their kids to private schools? Are you really saying that wealthy conservatives are happily sending their kids to public schools? Sorry, but milk spurts out my nose at the very notion. Republicans/neocons have been at the forefront of 30+ years of active dismantling of the American public education system.

Why? Because by and large, they don’t need it. They’re the ones who can actually afford to send their kids to private schools. And they know that the less well educated the populace is in general, the harder time middle class folks will have staying middle class. Killing public education is an astonishingly effective way to re-enforce the stratification of classes in America.

Kill education, and the rich get richer, while the poor and middle classes get poorer. Claiming that the failings of the school system are the fault of rich liberals sending their kids to private school is so obviously and transparently wrong that I’m surprised even you would make the argument. Or is it just that you just reflexively blame everything on liberals anymore, whether it makes any sense or not?

I’m a newcomer to HA. Yet somehow, I’m not all that surprised to find you lurking here, posting your volumes of dreck. I remember you from the early 1990s, when you got your jollies posting this crap on the UW’s “bb” bulletin board system. You didn’t make any more sense then than you do now. Even back then when I was just a dumb undergrad, and didn’t know one tenth as much about how the world really works as I do know, it was pretty obvious that you were full of crap.

Now I find, judging by the sheer volume of your comments on every single HA topic I’ve looked at, that you have nothing better to do now than spend your days trying to sell the same old crap as you were peddling fifteen years ago. Sorry. I wasn’t buying it then, and I’m not buying it now.

Your comments have nothing to do with who sends their children to public school in Seattle. The theory that the majority of private school attendees are from wealthy liberal families could easily be statistically tested.

First of all, 32% of Seattle school children attend private schools. This is almost twice the percentage of people in Seattle who vote Republican.

Second, the percentage of private school attendance is much higher in certain wealthier neighbors, and is well over twice the percentage of Republican vote in those neighbors.

Third, a substantial percentage of Republicans send their children to public schools — i.e. the 32% in private school does not include all children of Republican parents.

Hmm, when I look around Seattle, I see hundreds of buildings that used to be gas stations. There are only a fraction of the number of gas stations there used to be… and yet consumption of gasoline is way up…

I don’t think your point is valid about losing students due to closing schools. The school district needs to save its money for what goes on inside the class room and not for keeping an extra number of buildings maintained.

One of the reasons why many of the schools being closed having many poor kids is that kids who’s parents don’t have the time and or knowledge to get their kids into better schools tend to clump up in certain schools which unfortunately could be doing better. If we HAVE to consolidate students in the district (and we really do economically) these are just the types of schools that we should consolidate (by consolidate I mean move the students into larger groups by closing some schools).

I can’t resist the urge to go a bit snarky on this comment about why there aren’t more children in Seattle: ‘Another part is due to lifestyle choices of Seattle liberals. Many of them prefer same-sex relationships.’ Many conservatives “prefer same-sex relationships” as well, they just chose to lie about it to their conservative so-called ‘friends’. Our ‘conservative’ President and Vice-President only have 2 children each, are you sure they aren’t really ‘liberals’?

Goldy close all the schools in Seattle, bus all the little ones over to the Eastside on Metro until their families can find a new home to live in. Turn the old schools into old folks homes for the poor. Provide the means to swap homes in different neighborhoods to minimalize the financial burden on all the parties. Hell you might like the Eastside and love the new culture.

@6, by Richard: “The theory that the majority of private school attendees are from wealthy liberal families could easily be statistically tested.”

No doubt. And yet, you make the claim without a) providing any sourcing or references at all, b) acknowledging the remarkably obvious reality that plenty of affluent Republicans send their kids to private school too.

It’s your choice to single out liberals without backing it up, and without answering the most obvious of follow-up questions (i.e. “what about Republicans?”) that I’m calling you out for.

I watched you blather on in just this way fifteen years ago back at the UW. I watched people with better rhetorical skills take you apart piece by piece back then, too. I’ve watched, with some mixture of amusement and raised eyebrows, as run for one minor elected office after another, with astonishingly little success. And now that I’ve discovered HA, here I find you again, with apparently nothing to show for the past fifteen years of your life. Your positions don’t seem to have evolved one bit. Your rhetorical skills don’t seem to have evolved one bit. (Oops, sorry! I mean to say, “your skills and positions don’t seem to have intelligently designed one bit.” My bad!)

I have to ask: if this sort of public debate is what you’ve been doing for the past decade and a half, how on Earth have you managed _not_ to get any better at it? It boggles the mind.

Now we see why the GOP House leader was so against the FBI search of Jefferson’s office….

ABC:

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI, which is seeking to determine his role in an ongoing public corruption probe into members of Congress, ABC News has learned from high level government sources.
Federal officials say the information implicating Hastert was developed from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government.

The letter was written shortly after a fund-raiser for Hastert at a restaurant owned by Abramoff. Abramoff and his clients contributed more than $26,000 at the time.

Let’s see if the righties are as excited to promote this scandal as they were the Jeffereson set up. Me thinks not!

“No doubt. And yet, you make the claim without a) providing any sourcing or references at all, b) acknowledging the remarkably obvious reality that plenty of affluent Republicans send their kids to private school too.”

Commentby Marcos Stefanakopolus— 5/24/06@ 4:09 pm

You have accused the REPUBLICANS of trying to destroy public education. However, in Seattle — the most DEMOCRAT area of the entire state — public education is suffering because 32% of parents send their children to private schools — over three times the national average. (Our schools are funded by the state based on student enrollment, and richer kids tend to be the least expensive to educate.)

Let’s just suppose that every single REPUBLICAN parent in Seattle sent their children to private school. Only 18% of the folks in Seattle vote Republican. That would still leave 14% of the student population belonging to DEMOCRAT parents who send their children to private schools.

If these DEMOCRAT parents sent their children to public schools, the Seattle school system would be a lot stronger, since enrollment would have to increase by a minimum of 20% (i.e. from 68% to 82%, which is a 20.5% increase in the number of public school students), even in the most anti-Republican scenario that you can imagine.

So stop blaming the REPUBLICANS in Seattle for the terrible shape the school system is in. They have nothing to do with the situation. You have a 82% DEMOCRAT city population, with every single elected official in Seattle — school board, city government, state legislature, even representatives in Congress — being a DEMOCRAT.

Go to some heavily Republican jurisdiction — like Utah, Idaho, or South Dakota — and not only do virtually all of the students attend public schools, but the school system also does a pretty decent job.

Uhhh….Goldy, regarding your bank anology, that’s exactly what DID happen with Seattle Trust after KeyBank took ’em over. Probably with some others like Seafirst as well. No sense running a place for people to put their money in an area where the people don’t have any money to put anywhere.

Private elementary school is under $3000/ year… is your kids education worth more to you than blowing that on a week at disney?

Private high school is $7500-10,000 (unless you choose Seattle Prep) – Getting rid of beer, drinking out, soda’s, latte ansd egg mcmuffins and you have about 2450/year FOR YOUR KID.

An awful lot of us have put multiple kids through 12 years of private schools + Montessori preschools + camps + musical training with only one middle class income. If you want it FOR YOUR KID badly enough, you will do what it takes to make it happen.

”Part of this is because most wealthy liberals in Seattle send their children to private schools. Only 68% of Seattle children attend public schools, as compared to about a 90% average nationwide.”

@ 6 you write:

”First of all, 32% of Seattle school children attend private schools. This is almost twice the percentage of people in Seattle who vote Republican.”

”Second, the percentage of private school attendance is much higher in certain wealthier neighbors, and is well over twice the percentage of Republican vote in those neighbors.”

Then @ 15 you spew:

”Let’s just suppose that every single REPUBLICAN parent in Seattle sent their children to private school. Only 18% of the folks in Seattle vote Republican. That would still leave 14% of the student population belonging to DEMOCRAT parents who send their children to private schools.

If these DEMOCRAT parents sent their children to public schools, the Seattle school system would be a lot stronger, since enrollment would have to increase by a minimum of 20% (i.e. from 68% to 82%, which is a 20.5% increase in the number of public school students), even in the most anti-Republican scenario that you can imagine.”

Geez, Richard, you showed a much better statistical prowess during the election contest. Now you are making the silliest kind of statistical error. Additionally, you are committing “the ecological fallacy” (remember that?).

Here is the basic problem. There are only about 70,000 kids in all schools in Seattle. This is based on a recent newspaper article citing 47,000 kids in Seattle public school and using your figure of 68% public school enrollment. (I accept the 47,000 and 68% for the sake of argument but cannot vouch the accuracy of either).

If these figures are correct, there is only about 22,000 children in private schools, and your argument based on percentages is vacuous.

Looking back at the 2004 election: I add up the number for precincts prefixed by SEA, and there were something over 320,000 ballots cast. Rossi got 74,000+ votes and there were an additional 17,000 ballots that did not go to Gregoire in these precincts. In other words there are many times more Republican adults in Seattle than there are children in Seattle private schools.

This means that there are no deterministic bounds (other than 0% and 100%) for the percentage of children in private school from Republican households (or Democratic households). In other words, it does not defy the laws of mathematics for every one of those private school children to be from Democratic households; likewise, it does not defy the laws of mathematics for every one of those private school children to be from Republican households.

Without more data on (or solid theory about) the families of private school children, your speculations are just speculations. Of course the real world is even more complex: I mean, some of the children could be from “mixed race” (D+R) families.

So, to the folks around here that want to blame the Republicans for the shape of the Seattle school system, I say: Go ahead, you might as well; if Richard can spew baseless speculations from his arse, you can do so too!

Looking back at the 2004 election: I add up the number for precincts prefixed by SEA, and there were something over 320,000 ballots cast. Rossi got 74,000+ votes and there were an additional 17,000 ballots that did not go to Gregoire in these precincts.

Commentby dj— 5/24/06@ 10:05 pm

Wow — Rossi got over 20% out of Seattle? Looks like maybe 22% or even 23%. Whatever it was, too bad it wasn’t 0.1% more. Or even 0.05% more. Or even 0.021% more, if it involved switching votes from Gregoire to Rossi :)

Somehow I doubt that George Bush got even 18% out of Seattle, and I am pretty sure that I got a few percentage more than Bush did out of Seattle in my race for Assessor in 2003 :)

Your thinking here is absolutely flawed. Think about some of the highest-paid executives whose value centers on their ability to slash costs. Jack Welch was the macdaddy of them all, of course. Even locally, wasn’t cutting costs the single talent that got Stonecipher hired?
Nice try, but incorrect analogy.

Please Donate

I appreciate feeling appreciated. Also, money.

Currency:

Amount:

Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?

Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!

Search HA

Follow Goldy

HA Commenting Policy

It may be hard to believe from the vile nature of the threads, but yes, we have a commenting policy. Comments containing libel, copyright violations, spam, blatant sock puppetry, and deliberate off-topic trolling are all strictly prohibited, and may be deleted on an entirely arbitrary, sporadic, and selective basis. And repeat offenders may be banned! This is my blog. Life isn’t fair.